


Until We Become Something New

by TragicLove



Category: American Idol RPF
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Reunions, Ten Years Later
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-04
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2019-08-17 11:34:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16515650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TragicLove/pseuds/TragicLove
Summary: It's been ten years since season 7 of American Idol ended, and nothing has changed for David. Least of all his feelings for Cook.





	Until We Become Something New

**Author's Note:**

  * For [xhorizen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xhorizen/gifts).



> I'm sure this is a dead fandom, but I've been revisiting it lately and was inspired to write this for a friend.  
> This ignores the time David Archuleta showed up at David Cook's concert in Utah.

It wasn’t that David was losing his mind, it was just that he was kind of all over the place and wasn’t sure how to straighten it all out. When he’d gotten the call telling him that Fox wanted to do a where are they now type special on season seven of American Idol, his knee jerk reaction was to say no. Or, no thank you, really. Things had changed for David since the days of Idol, and of course they had. It had been ten years, he was more mature now, he had responsibilities. Heck, he was a full grown _adult._

But, he’d said yes. He hadn’t meant to. He was sure that he was telling them no, thank you, I can’t possibly fit that into my very busy schedule, but what he actually said was more along the lines of, I’d be honored to be there, please send the details to my manager. 

When he’d hung up the phone, he actually smacked himself in the forehead and then banged his forehead on his desk for good measure. _You’re being silly,_ he thought to himself. _It’s just a taping. It’ll take an hour, maybe less. Nothing could go wrong._

Until he was sat there in the green room of the studio where they were filming and he’d already been sitting there for two hours, and now his phone battery was dying and of course he didn’t bring his charger and-

“Hey, kid.”

David’s head nearly snapped off his neck with the quickness in which he turned his head toward the voice. He knew before he did it who would be standing there. You never really do forget a voice like that. 

“Cook,” he croaked, frozen to the too worn down leather couch he’d been sitting on for- why was this taking so long? 

“It’s good to see you, man,” Cook walked further into the room, stopping a couple of feet short of the couch. “Everyone out there's asking where you’re at. Why aren’t you hanging with everyone?”

“Everyone- I- well, I don’t know!” David said with a little too much enthusiasm. “No one was here when I got here and they showed me this room and they said, David, you’ll wait here and we’ll get you when we’re ready for you, except that was hours ago now, and they never did come get-“

“Whoa,” Cook chuckled, closing the last couple of feet between them and looking down at David. “You’ll give yourself a headache like that.”

David gaped up at Cook and then closed his mouth when he realized what he was doing. He suddenly felt very small, sitting there on that couch while Cook stood above him, looking down at him with that crooked smirk he’d always looked at him with when David was maybe making a little bit of a fool of himself. 

David stood up, bumping into Cook a little bit since he was standing so close. 

“Sorry,” he could feel his cheeks heating up and he cursed himself silently. “I didn’t mean to-“

“It’s alright,” Cook grinned, grabbing on to David’s shoulders and holding his arms out. “It’s good to see you,” he said again, his smile somehow even wider. Cook pulled David in to him then, squeezing him the same way he used to when they would hug. Ten years. Ten years and David still felt like his body fit right in perfectly when Cook hugged him. 

“It’s weird,” Cook said, letting go of David. “You look different but still exactly the same.”

“Well, I’m still me, but like, older,” David said and then felt his cheeks heat up again. “That was stupid, what I mean is that, I wasn’t old then and I’m old now- no,” David shook his head, his cheeks positively on fire now. “Oh, heck it.”

David looked down at the floor just as Cook let out a booming laugh. 

“You still say that, huh?”

“I mean, I guess I do, since I just did,” David mumbled. 

“Well, if you’re old, I’m god damn ancient,” Cook said, and David felt just as much like a baby as he always had whenever he’d reflexively wince whenever Cook or one of the other guys would swear. Come in second on a huge singing competition, tour the world, spend two years on a mission and a full grown man still couldn’t handle the word damn. _Get it together, David._

“No, I didn’t mean- no, no that’s not-“

“Relax,” Cook laughed, clapping a hand down on David’s shoulder. “I’m just messing with you, Archie.”

Sure, some people still called David Archie. Mostly fans, the ones who had stuck around, that is. But, _wow,_ it sounded different coming from Cook. Like it was one of the most melodic, beautiful words in the English language. It almost took David a little too long to realize that Cook was saying his name and not something else entirely. 

“Are you okay?” Cook leaned down, his hands splayed out on his thighs. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Yeah,” David smiled, shaking his head, his eyes fluttering closed just for a half of a second before opening back up, meeting Cook’s. “I’m okay.”

 

 

The thing was, Cook made David’s stomach hurt. 

Not in a terribly bad way, but more in a… _way._

David wasn’t really sure what it meant, the fact that he had been totally wrong about himself. Over ten years had gone by since their days on Idol and not much of anything had actually really changed for him. He was still that same rattle-brained kid he had been then. He may have aged in number, but he didn’t feel older, he didn’t feel adult. He’d searched practically the whole world to find something that he knew he was missing, but there was just some kind of _hole_ in him, keeping him in this space, keeping him feeling as if he wasn’t who and where and what he was meant to be.

But, when Cook was there, when he was smiling at him like David was the best thing he’d ever met - and sure, Cook looked at a lot of people like that, David was sure of it - when he laughed that Cook laugh and did all those Cook things, David felt something _different._ Almost like a little bit of that hole was filling in, that a missing piece was being glued back where it belonged. The whole thing kind of made David want to puke a little bit.

 

The producers made David and Cook sing Hero, they said it would bring nostalgia, that people were still talking about it after all these years. David wasn’t sure who these people were, but he was sure that they didn’t exist. 

The whole thing went by in a blur, David couldn’t even remember holding the microphone, nevermind singing into it, and honestly? He was more than thrilled when it was all over. They’d moved to a little bar down the street where the network had paid to have a private after party after filming had ended. David didn’t drink, everyone knew that, but maybe he snuck two flutes of champagne to calm his stupid nerves, or maybe it was three, and why were his legs so wobbly?

He had been sitting in a booth squeezed between Cook and Brooke and across from Carly and Jason for most of the evening. They’d talked a lot about Michael and how sad it was that he wasn’t there with them, how the last time some of them had seen each other had been at his funeral, and how he’d have been the life of the party, making them all laugh if he’d been there. Brooke, Carly, and Jason cooed over their kids, flashing pictures of them around for a while, and Cook and David couldn’t relate, but they made all of the right ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’ sounds at all of the right times and then Jason was pulling on his coat and the girls were grabbing their purses and everyone was leaving and suddenly before he even realized that it had happened, it was just him and Cook in that booth, still sitting side by side. Cook was nursing a beer and David was sipping a water, wondering when the little waves crashing around in his head would just stop it already. After a minute or two of small talk, David suggested that maybe he should go too, he had an early morning after all - a lie, the only thing David had to look forward to was an empty hotel room and Netflix, but Cook didn’t need to know that.

“No,” Cook grinned, shaking his head when David opened his mouth to protest. “No! Come on, stay a little while longer, it’s been forever.”

Cook grabbed lightly at David’s arm and David smiled, nodding a little bit.

“Yeah, okay,” he said, looking down into his water glass. “Yeah, you’re right, it’s been forever.”

“You drank tonight,” Cook cocked an eyebrow in that very Cook way and David looked up at him, a horrified look on his face.

“What! I didn’t, I-” _sigh._ “How’d you know?”

“I still know you, Archie,” Cook laughed. “And you’re no better at hiding things than you were back then.”

 _If only you knew,_ Archie thought, but instead of saying it, he just looked back into his water, his cheeks heating up a little bit. He guessed that was another thing that hadn’t changed. Cook always did have the ability to make him burn.

“You stopped calling,” David said quietly after a few seconds. “You just stopped keeping in touch one day. Did I-” he looked up at Cook then and frowned. “Did I do something?”

“What?” Cook said softly, shaking his head. “No, of course you didn’t do anything. Life got busy, you know how it is, and then you went away and,” Cook shrugged, reaching a hand out and placing it on David’s shoulder. “Time just kept moving and I guess neither of us picked up the phone.”

“I should have called when I got back,” David frowned again. “I just thought...I guess I thought you wouldn’t want to be bothered with a stupid kid like me anymore.”

“Hey,” Cook pulled on David’s arm softly. “Look at me.”

David turned his head, his eyes meeting Cook’s. His eyes were sad, his eyebrows drawn together and David hated that he’d ruined their perfectly good night. 

“I have never looked at you as a stupid kid, even when I probably should have,” Cook leaned in a little closer. “You’ve always been Archie to me, someone special. I didn’t bond with anyone on that stupid show the way I did with you, time doesn’t erase that.”

“You’re special to me, too,” David said. 

“I’ll do better at keeping in touch,” Cook nodded, grinning. “I’ll call, I’ll call so much you’ll be sick of me in no time.”

“That’s not possible.”

“We’ll see,” Cook shrugged. “I’m persistent.” 

David smiled, thinking of what it would have to take for him to get tired of Cook. He was weighing the options in his head and he realized that it was an absolute impossibility. He’d be happy to see Cook every single minute of every single day, happy if maybe they never went another hour without talking to one another. David didn’t know if it was some newfound courage or the residuals of the champagne he’d snuck, but he made a snap decision in that moment. He was going to be a braver person. He wasn’t going to let his anxieties or his shyness hold him back anymore. Probably, in a minute Cook would be laughing in his face, grabbing his coat and walking out of that bar, deciding that no, he absolutely would not be calling more, _but you know what,_ David thought to himself. _Heck it._

“I have to tell you something,” he said, turning in the booth a little bit so his body was facing Cook.

“Okay, shoot,” Cook smiled.

“Do you remember how, after the show, there were those people online? You know, how they’d like...write things, like...stories, about us?”

“Ah, the good old Cookleta,” Cook chuckled. “Yeah, I remember.”

“Did you ever look at any of it?”

“I mean,” Cook shrugged. “Yeah, sure. Why?”

“What if-” David looked down at the booth between them and then back up at Cook, taking a breath. “What if it wasn’t all just made up? What if they were right - um, about...some things?”

“What?” Cook laughed, squinting his eyes at David a little bit. “What do you mean?”

“Okay so, I’m just going to say this before I don’t say it because, I mean, you know how I am and-”

“Archie, slow down,” Cook laughed, putting his hand on David’s arm. “Breathe.”

David swallowed hard, letting out a long breath and then squared his eyes with Cook’s.

“I liked- um, I had a huge crush on you, okay?” David said quickly, looking down at the booth in between them again, his face on fire this time.

Cook didn’t say anything, and it was probably only for a minute, but David thought it felt more like an hour, or maybe a week or a even a decade. When he finally looked back up, he almost expected that Cook would be gone, his words sending him straight out of that bar and as far away from David as he could get. But, he was still there and his face was soft and his eyes were saying something, but David didn’t know what it was.

“You could- um-” David shrugged one shoulder. “You could say something?”

“Why didn’t you?” Cook’s voice was soft and David wanted to know what that meant. He wanted to shrink down and jump right into Cook’s head and figure out exactly what was happening inside of it right then. “Why didn’t you ever say something?”

“I didn’t think it mattered,” David shrugged again. “Why would you care? I mean, look at me. I’m still just - I’m just me.” 

“You’re-” Cook started, but then the bartender shouted out that they were closing up and he was really sorry, but they’d have to go, and then Cook was sliding out of the booth and picking up his jacket and then they were walking out of the bar and into the chilly night air and David just wanted to die.

“Where are you staying?” Cook looked over at him as he pulled his jacket on, a beat up leather one that looked suspiciously just like one he used to wear.

“Oh, just around the corner,” David motioned down the street and Cook nodded, nudging David’s shoulder.

“Come on, I’ll walk with you.”

 

They walked to David’s hotel in silence, or at least outwardly. Inside, David’s head was screaming at him, letting him know just how _stupid_ it was of him to say what he had said. Now, everything would be bad and Cook would never want to talk to him again. He’d made a fool of himself, just like he was prone to do, and really, he was right, nothing had changed for him. 

“Well, this is me,” David motioned towards the tall building they’d just walked up to. 

Cook stopped walking and turned to face David, looking at him, seemingly trying to sort out his thoughts and then, slowly he took two small steps forward, his palm coming up to gently rest on David’s cheek. He leaned in, bending slightly to make up for their difference in height, and when his face was there - right there - he spoke slowly and low.

“You shoulda said something.”

And then Cook was kissing him - really, actually kissing him. It was gentle and soft and it was over before David really had the chance to tell his brain to do anything, anything at all, and he found himself leaning forward, towards Cook as Cook pulled backwards away from him, and _oh, gosh,_ he didn’t want that to be the end of it. 

“You really should have said something sooner,” Cook was grinning and then David was grinning and then they were laughing and Cook wrapped David up in his arms, hugging him tight just like he always had, but somehow this time it felt different.

Finally, all at once, everything had changed.


End file.
